PROHIBITED TOPICS - LIES, LIES, AND MORE LIES

On April 15, the Florida Department of Education issued a dramatic press release: "Florida Rejects Publishers’ Attempts to Indoctrinate Students." Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran announced that he had rejected 54 math textbooks submitted by publishers for the next school year. According to the Florida Department of Education, 26 of those math textbooks were rejected because they contained "prohibited topics," including Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL).

To underscore the importance of this decision, the release contained a quote from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis: “It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students.” Corcoran said the math textbooks were rejected because children deserve "a world-class education without the fear of indoctrination or exposure to dangerous and divisive concepts in our classrooms."

In the days since the Florida Department of Education declared a handful of the books included “prohibited topics,” like Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), Governor Ron DeSantis and his office have been incredibly tight-lipped about what exactly the state education department found to be so appalling in those 54 math textbooks that the state decided to immediately ban them from public schools.

DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, has been doing a good job of “saying the quiet part out loud” recently on such things as “Don’t Say Gay”, the Disney war, and now the battle to save math from “wokeness.” Her explanation of this made it pretty clear that the DeSantis administration is just tossing a handful of concepts the right-wing hates into a bucket and labeling it Critical Race Theory. In a tweet on Monday, she encouraged any parent who wants to teach their kids “Woke Math, where ‘2+2=4’ is white supremacy” to go ahead and purchase the books themselves.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, “Common Core” has been a far right boogeyman for being the tool for the “plot” to turn education into indoctrination in favor of one world gay socialism since the program was first announced back in the Bush Administration. Common Core is a set of national standards originally championed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. However, Republicans dropped their support of Common Core when it was also embraced by former President Obama. Since he was elected, DeSantis has made a priority of "eliminating" Common Core from the curriculum.

Common Core's standards are a set of basic skills needed at each grade level. It is impossible to "eliminate" Common Core because many of those skills are foundational. For example, the Common Core standards for 1st Grade math include the ability to count to 120. One cannot eliminate counting from the math curriculum. Florida's B.E.S.T. standards, which DeSantis created to replace Common Core, also include the ability to count to 120 as a core standard for 1st Grade. In 2020, Jacob Oliva, the chancellor of Florida's K-12 schools, "acknowledged that some BEST lessons would be similar to Common Core, like learning the alphabet in kindergarten or learning multiplication in third grade."

As regards “Critical Race Theory,” we need to remember all the way back to last June, when far right fuckwit Christopher Rufo posted the idea that “Critical race theory has become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people.” Rufo went on to encourage far right activists to label anything they opposed as “Critical Race Theory.” “We have successfully frozen their brand - 'critical race theory’ - into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category. The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think 'critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”

Spurred by Rufo, this “complaint” now dominates conservative politics. Debates over critical race theory are raging on school boards and in state legislatures, most prominently in Florida, but also in Texas. Fox News naturally increased its coverage and commentary on the issue. Republicans see the issue as a central element of the case they are making to voters in the midterm election campaign. Rufo has become an in-demand activist who - by his count - has advised hundreds of leaders across the country, including school board candidates, state legislators and members of Congress. The fact that this, along with “grooming” has spread through the right and into the “mainstream” of the Republican seditious conspiracy (it’s not a party and I will no longer use the word to describe this) as it has proves that Hillary Clinton was right 30 years ago when she described the “vast right wing conspiracy” that had enveloped the Democrats back then.

DeSantis put Rufo’s plan into action last Tuesday, speaking at The Villages (a place that demonstrates the boomer generation can’t die soon enough): “There is a movement to say math should be not about getting the right answer, but more about social and emotional response. It doesn’t matter how you feel about the math problem. It matters whether you can solve the math problem.”

Right-wing activists claim that SEL is CRT by another name but that is inaccurate. SEL focuses on the development of "critical thinking, emotion management, conflict resolution, decision making, and teamwork" — skills that are necessary for students to excel in school and in life. The term dates back to a 1997 book but the concept of character development dates back at least to Benjamin Franklin in the mid-1700s. SEL teaches kids how to think critically and manage emotions while learning the material. I have to admit I wasn’t that aware of it until recently, but from what I have come to understand of it, I can say without a doubt that I would not have hated math as I did back in school, and would likely have learned to use it. I know I wouldn’t have polished the Vice Principal’s bench in the schools I attended as I did, and I likely wouldn’t think of those 12 years spent in public school as a prison from which I escaped.

SEL’s inclusion in DeSantis’ complaint is just another examples of how bad faith these attacks on the education system from the right have become. The right has followed Rufo’s directive and hijacked the idea to fear monger about “wokeness” in schools, passing laws that outlaw discussions of race that might make students feel “discomfort” in the classroom or the workplace.

The actual content of the banned books proves how far the far right has gone to manufacture outrage around “issues” that don’t exist.

One of the rejected books is an elementary school math textbook that encourages students to “work together” and “listen to our friends and teachers” while working on math problems. It also has a series called “Math is… Mindset” that asks students questions like: “How can you show that you value the ideas of others?” and “What helps you understand your partner’s ideas?” Yeah, this is Truly Terrible Stuff.

Notably, the Florida Department of Education, Desantis, and Pushaw did not provide any examples of how these math textbooks would indoctrinate Florida students. The only "example" Pushaw provided was a math worksheet from Missouri that mentioned Maya Angelou.

Florida eventually released a list of the 26 math textbooks rejected for "prohibited concepts" (the remainder were rejected for other reasons) but there was no information explaining the rejection.

According to the Florida Department of Education, “the highest number of books rejected were for grade levels K-5, where an alarming 71 percent were not appropriately aligned with Florida standards or included prohibited topics and unsolicited strategies.”

A review of eight of those books revealed no discussion of race, racism, or anything that could be construed as related to CRT in any of the textbooks.

“Florida Reveal Math Grade 5,” which was rejected, uses prompts to encourage students to think critically about how they work with others in the classroom setting. The introduction states, “When we do math, we listen to the arguments of others and think about what makes sense and what doesn’t.” Other prompts encourage critical thinking and highlight relationship skills, such as: “What can I learn from others’ thinking about the problem?” and “What can you do to help all classmates feel comfortable in math class?”

“Vision Florida B.E.S.T. Mathematics Grade 1" was also rejected. It includes a section entitled “Learn Together" which outlines the importance of “share your ideas,” "value ideas from others,” and “listen with an open mind.”

“M/J Grade 8 Mathematics: Pre-Algebra” was the only middle school math textbook rejected for including "prohibited topics." The book encourages students to "actively participate," "persevere," and "keep a positive mindset." This focus on self-confidence is considered “SEL.”

The book also has a section throughout that gives students little factoids about mathematicians in history. Two of these highlight the fact that Black mathematicians exist, citing the works of Elbert Frank Cox and Dorothy Johnson Vaughan (the NASA scientist whose story was told in the movie “Hidden Figures”). These historical vignettes are not an example of CRT and the brief biographies do not constitute "race essentialism." They are, however, consistent with Florida Department of Education’s “multicultural representation” requirement for all 2021-2022 instructional materials in K-12 mathematics.

“Functions Modeling Change,” one of five pre-calculus books rejected for the inclusion of prohibited topics contains ten mentions of the word "race" - all are related to running and biking. There is no discussion of racism and no math problems that deal with racial issues. There is also no discussion of emotions, teamwork, conflict resolution, or anything associated with SEL.

“Thinking Mathematically,” another rejected textbook for advanced high school students, states in its introduction that the purpose of the book is to "understand and reason with quantitative and issues and mathematical ideas students are likely to encounter in college, career, and life."

The book does include a discussion of "prejudice" but only as an example to illustrate that “correlation does not equal causation.” It also introduces the concept of "stereotyping" as a form of prejudice which can interfere with mathematical thinking.

What all this reveals is the utter bad faith of the “thought leaders” of the far right. Any issue is exploited, regardless of any factual basis, as a way to promote confusion and social chaos, to arrive at a point - as President Obama pointed out in his speech at Stanford - where people do not trust information or institutions. The lies and conspiracy theories put forward by the far right have as their goal the destruction of democracy.

Nothing in this controversy promoted by DeSantis as a “defense of children” stands up to any scrutiny. The same is true of anything else he - or any other far right leader - promotes.

Everything they say is a lie.

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